Re: granularity/definition of a "service"

Monika Solanki wrote:
> 
> Any service that has been suitably exposed as a service that "receives only"
> or "sends only" any kind of data whatsoever could be classified as a
> service, because that is what it is supposed to do. However can the
> fundamental operations of sending and receiving messages that any service is
> suppose to perform, irrespective of the core functionalities it offers, be
> classified as a "service" at its lowest level of granularity?

One way this can be accomplished is through use of a registry, in which
a WSDL document is consumed by the registry and the various WSDL
constructs - to include operations - would be registered and classified
according to custom taxonomies.

More specifically: The OASIS ebXML Registry standard[1] contains a
feature within its 2.5 specifications (soon to be 3.0) called a Content
Management service, that (among other things) can read in an XML
document (such as a WSDL document) and, through application of an XSLT
transformation, transform the document into a form that is expected by
the registry for registration of a RegistryObject. One can use this
feature to classify a Service operation (or any other construct
associated with the service in a WSDL document) according to a custom
taxonomy (aka classification scheme).

UDDI has a similar feature that is described in its Technical Note
titled "Using WSDL in a UDDI Registry, Version 2.0.2"[2].

Hope that helps-

Kind Regards,
Joe Chiusano
Booz Allen Hamilton
Strategy and Technology Consultants to the World

[1] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=regrep
[2] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/uddi-spec/doc/tns.htm#WSDLTNV2
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ian Dickinson" <ian.dickinson@hp.com>
> To: "Huhns, Michael" <huhns@engr.sc.edu>
> Cc: <public-sws-ig@w3.org>
> Sent: Sunday, September 19, 2004 1:20 PM
> Subject: Re: granularity/definition of a "service"
> 
> >
> > Huhns, Michael wrote:
> > > A "service" that only receives is equivalent to a write-only memory.  I
> > > have never found that to be a useful service and would like to hear
> > > about the situation you are imagining where it would be a coherent
> > > stand-alone functionality.
> > You could argue that, for the average citizen, data-gathering by state
> > security services is a write-only memory.  Likewise, any situation where
> > information is captured that is intended to be read only be
> > third-parties, not by the capturer him/her self.  Trojan-horse keystroke
> > loggers would be an example (not that you'd choose to invoke such a
> > service from a UDDI registry :-)
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Ian
> >
> > Ian Dickinson
> > HPLabs, Bristol, UK
> >
> >

-- 
Kind Regards,
Joseph Chiusano
Associate
Booz Allen Hamilton

Received on Sunday, 19 September 2004 17:16:29 UTC